Summary of New Cold Wars by David E. Sanger: China's Rise, Russia's Invasion, and America's Struggle to Defend the West

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Summary of New Cold Wars by David E. Sanger: China's Rise, Russia's Invasion, and America's Struggle to Defend the West

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David E. Sanger's book, New Cold Wars, explores America's growing rivalry with China and Russia, based on interviews with top officials from five administrations. It explores critical questions like Putin's invasion of Ukraine, nuclear arsenal reach, Kyiv's doom, Xi's invasion of Taiwan, and global leadership.

• Language: English
• Publisher: BookRix
• Release date: Apr 18, 2024
• ISBN: 9783755475200

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Summary of

New Cold Wars

A

Summary of David E. Sanger’s book

China's Rise, Russia's Invasion, and America's Struggle to Defend the West

GP SUMMARY

Summary of New Cold Wars by David E. Sanger: China's Rise, Russia's Invasion, and America's Struggle to Defend the West

By GP SUMMARY© 2024, GP SUMMARY.

Author: GP SUMMARY

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Cover, illustration: GP SUMMARY

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Please note that this book contains a summary of the original content, which is a condensation of the key ideas and information found in the original book. Therefore, it is recommended to read the original book for a comprehensive and detailed understanding of the topics discussed. This summary is provided for informational purposes only and is not intended to infringe upon the intellectual property rights of the original book.

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PROLOGUE

THE MOTHER LODE

In October 2021, a top-secret set of briefings revealed that Russian President Vladimir V. Putin was planning to seize Ukraine, a country he considered an integral part of the old Russian empire. The intelligence report was comprehensive, including electronic intercepts, cyber penetration of Russia's networks, and reports from informants nurtured by the CIA. President Joe Biden, who had been tasked with halting Russian ransomware attacks on American infrastructure, debated whether to confront Putin directly.

Jake Sullivan, a Minnesota wunderkind, was deep in the details of the intelligence and believed that the plan was to restore Russia to its former glory. However, it would be too great a risk to confront the Russians with evidence that U.S. officials were so plugged into their top leadership that the White House knew what Putin was planning.

Biden decided to send an emissary, William J. Bill Burns, to warn the Russian leader of the danger he faced if he tried to topple Volodymyr Zelensky's government and occupy the country. Burns had served as the American ambassador to Russia during the heady days when Putin was taking power and Russia seemed neutered.

Burns's objective was clear: engage Putin in a conversation, tell him that the United States knew exactly what he was planning, and try to slow or derail his final decision. It wasn't until Burns landed in Moscow aboard an unmarked CIA plane that he learned that the Russian leader was in isolation in his Sochi dacha. The Russians offered Burns a phone call with the president, but he agreed to convey his message by phone.

In December 2021, American intelligence warned Putin that an invasion of Ukraine would be a horrific mistake that would cost both Putin and Russia dearly. By February 2022, there was no doubt in the minds of America's top national security officials that Putin was preparing to redraw the borders of Europe by force. Intelligence suggested that it would happen as follows: first, a mad dash from the north down to Kyiv, then an amphibious landing in Odessa, cutting off Ukraine's access to the sea and linking the Crimean Peninsula overland to Russian territory.

Russian President Vladimir Putin declared this series of American-orchestrated leaks to be fake news. General Mark Milley, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, called his Russian counterpart, Valery Gerasimov, a straight-up denial that invasion was imminent. Antony J. Blinken, Biden's secretary of state and confidant on global issues, conducted a similarly dead-end conversation with the infuriating Sergey Lavrov, the longtime Russian foreign minister. Lavrov was in high dudgeon about the American warnings of an imminent invasion, insisted that it was all Western disinformation, the latest effort to spur Russophobia.

Europeans were also in denial, unable to imagine that part of their continent could soon be in flames, with Ukrainian populations massing in subway stations to avoid bombardment. In mid-February, European foreign and defense ministers adamantly insisted that an invasion would not happen. They believed that Putin was putting on a show to scare the world and wouldn't threaten his own economic interests, most significantly the imminent opening of the Nord Stream 2 pipeline that would pump gas directly from Russia to Western Europe, routing around Ukraine.

Ukrainian President Zelensky arrived in Munich to address the growing concern over an invasion of Ukraine. He urged leaders to act immediately and not wait for Putin to pull the trigger. Zelensky also warned his partners and friends not to agree on anything behind their back with Putin.

Putin had recently emerged from isolation for his biggest gamble yet, flying to Beijing to make a show of his relationship with China's president, Xi Jinping. They had been courting each other for years, and each cemented their authority and became more nationalistic. Now, Putin needed Xi to demonstrate that he and his fellow autocrat could combine their power and influence.

Some U.S. national security and intelligence officials believe Putin simply assured Xi there would be no invasion during the Olympics, which would distract from China's big moment on the world stage. Senior U.S. intelligence officials later concluded that Putin described to Xi plans for a limited military operation.

At Microsoft headquarters in Redmond, Washington, the warning signs looked more like June 2017, when Russian hackers targeted the Ukrainian economy with an innovative cyberattack called NotPetya. The fallout was devastating, crippling small businesses and large firms, and flattening Western firms in the region. Microsoft's chief of trust and safety, Tom Burt, predicted that the first shot in this new conflict would be digital, with the goal of preventing Ukrainian leaders from communicating with each other or their own people.

The latest Russian activity in cyberspace, Whispergate, helped firm up Microsoft's suspicions. After eight years of incessant Russian cyberattacks, the Ukrainians mostly just sighed and brought their systems back online as soon as they could.

Microsoft's security engineers, Justin Warner and his colleagues, were working on defending against Russian attacks as geopolitical tensions increased. They were also trying to convince Ukraine to move its data into the cloud and off servers inside Ukraine that would be sitting ducks when the Russians attacked. In January, Microsoft suspected that the January incident was exploratory, a scouting expedition designed to test Russia's ability to paralyze Ukraine's government and military communications.

On February 23, 2022, Microsoft began to see evidence of another incident in Ukraine. The malware, which shared several key indicators, had been activated at scale, hitting government agencies, financial institutions, and the energy sector. The team brought in Ramin Nafisi, a malware expert and former defense contractor, to disassemble the malware and understand its destructive capability.

Burt composed an urgent warning to the White House, stating that several Ukrainian government ministries were under attack. By February 23, 150 or so Ukrainian digital systems had been hit across ten different organizations. Neuberger, President Biden's deputy national security advisor for cyber and emerging technologies, connected Burt to her counterparts abroad, including Serhii Demediuk, the deputy secretary of Ukraine's National Security and Defense Council, and Mircea Geoană, the deputy NATO secretary general.

Neuberger brought Burt's report to Sullivan, the national security advisor, to assess the risk of imminent conflict. However, it was hard to pinpoint the actual day that the Russians might kick off hostilities due to numerous indicators of the coming violence.

The war in Ukraine began with concerns about the digital war spreading quickly, potentially turning the conflict into a war against NATO. However, the concern was misplaced, as the Russians had prepared neither a cyberattack nor a physical attack beyond Ukraine. The assumption that governments had access to perfect information had been reversed, with tech companies now having the ability to defend national networks independently from thousands of miles away. Companies were now the front line of support in the effort to keep the country running.

However, it wasn't clear that even the best cyber defenses would matter, as the Russians held every advantage. The acclaimed Russian military failed to take Kyiv, and Putin and American intelligence agencies had wildly overestimated the capabilities of Russian troops and the fighting spirit of the Ukrainian people. Within months, the Russians began a humiliating retreat, shelling cities mercilessly and dug into their positions.

The war seemed at once familiar and surprising, with the era it demarcated being part 1914, part 1941, and part 2022. General Milley saw thousands of Ukrainians and Russians digging in, seeking safety in long trenches meant to survive brutal artillery fire. The threat of Russia using a nuclear weapon against Ukraine resurfaced every few months, altering critical decisions in Washington over how to arm Ukraine and what restrictions to place on how those arms could be employed.

THE SHAPE OF THE NEW COLD WARS

The book discusses the global shock that took Washington by surprise: the revival of superpower conflict. For over thirty years, the United States and its Western allies had a sense of certainty that the greatest byproduct of America's victory in the Cold War would be a permanent era of peace among the world's nuclear superpowers. However, warning signs have accelerated over the past fifteen years, such as the invasion of Georgia and Crimea, cyberattacks from Moscow and Beijing, Putin's move into Syria, and Xi's determination to use the Belt and Road Initiative and Huawei to wire Europe, Africa, and Latin America with Chinese-made 5G networks. America was distracted by two misbegotten wars in the Middle East, a deadly pandemic, and the effort to overturn a legitimate election, making it hard to focus on America's role in the world. Key to this assumption was the assumption that Russia and China would integrate themselves into the West in their own ways, with economics trumping nationalism and territorial ambition.

The faith in the power of globalization in early-twentieth-century American foreign policy has